by Julia Vargas
ConsumerFraudDefense.org
JVargas@ConsumerFraudDefense.org
¡Hola!
The cuisine, the music, the dancing, the passion for life...what's not to love about Hispanic culture?
Learning Spanish is undoubtedly the best way to understand and appreciate Hispanic culture. Whether you want to learn Spanish in order to communicate better with someone at work, you want to travel to Latin America or Spain for pleasure, or you simply want to actually understand the lyrics of your favorite salsa song, learning Spanish is absolutely crucial to communicating with Hispanics and fully appreciating Hispanic culture.
Unfortunately, there can be many frustrating moments while learning Spanish. Whether you are just beginning to study or want to brush up on your language skills before a trip abroad, there are many options for learning and practicing Spanish.
As anyone who has tried to learn or practice Spanish before can attest, the Spanish course one chooses does make a difference. Here at ConsumerFraudDefense.org, we've evaluated hundreds of Spanish learning programs to discover which make learning Spanish easy AND fun for both the beginning Spanish speaker AND the person who wants to brush up on his or her Spanish skills!
How We Evaluate Spanish Learning Course
The way we evaluate each software course for learning Spanish is simple. We gather together a group of consumers who have all voluntarily expressed an interest in learning or practicing Spanish and divide that group into three distinct categories:
Level 1: Those who have no familiarity with Spanish
Level 2: Those who have studied Spanish in the past but don't remember much
Level 3: Those who speak Spanish and are looking to maintain their language skills
Before we allow each of these consumers to participate, however, we test their language skills with both a written and oral exam. Each consumer is placed into one of the categories referenced above based on the combined results of both of these exams.
We've found that consumers tend to either over or under estimate their language skills. By independently testing both the written and oral Spanish communication of each volunteer consumer beforehand, we can group together the consumers who are most similar to one another in terms of familiarity with Spanish based on our own independent tests.
With three distinct levels of Spanish language skills independently verified amongst our consumers, we're then able to ensure that we find the proper software course for each type of consumer.
Our Surprising Results
Not surprisingly, we found that the majority of Spanish language learning courses we tested simply didn't work that well for any of our volunteer consumers, regardless of their previous knowledge of Spanish.
Either because the course was too boring or simply moved too fast without proper explanation, there were numerous courses which tested poorly regardless of the Spanish level of the consumer who tested it. Many of our testers came back and told us that several of the programs didn't stimulate their minds, resulting in a feeling of boredom with the course and significant decrease in their interest in continuing to study Spanish. Several other courses simply moved too fast without proper explanation according to our volunteer testers. As a whole, we uncovered a number of courses which actually deterred the tester from continuing to study Spanish - which is the exact opposite effect you want when studying a language!
Although most of the courses which we tested that were designed to help someone learn Spanish fell short of our expectations, we did manage to find a few that stood out from the crowd. These courses actually engaged our testers and kept their attention in their quest to learn Spanish. They helped our testers practice both writing and speaking. Regardless of previous skill level, these courses helped with basic Spanish vocabulary (for those new to Spanish) while also serving as a refresher course (for those more familiar with Spanish). Later on, these same programs pushed our testers to express complex ideas and thoughts in Spanish as their skills became more advanced.
We have compiled from our extensive tests the top software courses for learning Spanish below. If you need to learn or practice Spanish quickly in a fun and stimulating manner, these are the Spanish courses we recommend:
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 ConsumerFraudDefense.org Top Selection |
Rocket Spanish
Voted #1 By Fellow Consumers For Learning & Practicing Spanish
|
Rocket Spanish Premier Course
$99.95
60 Day Money Back Guarantee
5-Star Consumer Fraud Defense Rating:
 |
What you get:
- 1,000+ pages of beginner & advanced grammar instruction, written lessons, and exercises
- 31 interactive step-by-step audio lessons to build your listening comprehension
- 45 full-illustrated grammar lessons with embedded audio clips
- Innovative visual & audio vocabulary-building recognition games to increase your comfort with Spanish
- Professionally moderated forum support at the Spanish Learner's Forum for all your language & travel questions
- Award-winning MegaCards for quick & fun word memorization
 
Appropriate for:
- Beginner
- Intermediate
- Advanced |
Pros:
- Interactive speaking
-
Very effective at vocabulary
- Super interactive
- Easy to use
- Excellent overall value
-
MP3/iPod compatible |
Cons:
- None reported thus far |
Review:
Rocket Spanish has the most comprehensive suite of learning tools for practicing both written and spoken Spanish we've found. Almost every tester of ours, whether they were new to learning Spanish or were simply looking to maintain their existing Spanish skills, picked Rocket Spanish as their top choice.
Rocket Spanish contains the most material, by far, of all the Spanish courses that we reviewed. The material is presented in a way which is fun, engaging, and which allowed our testers to learn at their own pace.
Whether looking to practice their written or speaking capabilities in Spanish, our tests verified that if you want to learn or practice Spanish quickly in a matter that captures the excitement of Hispanic culture, Rocket Spanish is the top choice. |
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 ConsumerFraudDefense.org Second Selection |
Visual Link Spanish
A Great Beginner Course
|
Visual Link Spanish
Complete Course
$134.99
6-Month Money Back Guarantee
4-Star Consumer Fraud Defense Rating:
 |
What you get:
- Visual link software for visually identifying & speaking Spanish
- 18 audio tracks to sharpen your listening skills
- Mini-manual with common Spanish phrases & verbs
Appropriate for:
- Beginner
- Intermediate (when coupled with the additional Visual Link Spanish Advanced Verb Module)
|
Pros:
- Good for speaking
- Easy to use
- Excellent images for learning
|
Cons:
- Really only good for true beginners
- Lack of additional course material
|
Review:
Our testers with no previous experience learning Spanish reported that the Visual Link Spanish Complete Course was fun and interactive. More advanced users found this course to be quite easy and were disappointed with the lack of depth the course provided. However, this course does a great job of exhaustively covering the fundamentals and common phrases of Spanish in an interactive manner.
If you need a few phrases for a quick trip to Latin America or Spain, the Visual Link Spanish Complete Course will give you enough Spanish to survive, however, you'll wish you had learned a bit more before you went as the phrases and verbs covered by the Visual Link Spanish Complete Course are somewhat limited in their scope.
You will be able to order a beer, find out where the restroom is, tell people your name and where you are from amongst a few other useful phrases. Just don't expect to engage in any meaningful political discussions or carry on conversations that last longer than 5 to 10 minutes with a Spanish speaker after working with the Visual Link Spanish Complete Course.
Intermediate and advanced users should look instead to Rocket Spanish, which has a much more in-depth advanced section (including the award-winning Rocket Spanish Level II course) and also offers significantly more material and value for less than the price of the Visual Link Spanish Complete Course |
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 ConsumerFraudDefense.org Third Selection |
Rosetta Stone
A Very Solid - But Expensive - Course
|
Rosetta Stone Level 1
Latin America
$219.00
30 Day Money Back Guarantee
3-Star Consumer Fraud Defense Rating:
 |
What you get:
- Software with 92 integrated lessons
- A unique image-audio and image-text learning format that requires the user to not use English
Appropriate for:
- Beginner
- Intermediate (see Rosetta Stone Level 2)
- Advanced (see Rosetta Stone Level 3) |
Pros:
- Good for speaking
- Excellent for visually learning words
- Focused specifically on Latin America
- Easy to use
|
Cons:
- Quite expensive
- Needs a high-performance computer to work correctly
- Level 1 only in this course (there are 3 levels)
- Audio Companion MP3 lessons also cost extra |
Review:
Rosetta Stone has crafted an extremely in-depth package which covers everything related to Spanish: Hundreds of verbs, the most commonly used nouns, and a variety of different expressions common throughout Latin America and Spain (depending upon which version you purchase).
The downside to the Rosetta Stone Level 1 course is the prohibitively high cost. In fact, this course is much more expensive than the other courses we've reviewed. Their Level 1 course alone (there are 3 total) costs more than twice the amount of our number #1 course - Rocket Spanish, and Rocket Spanish contains more material and is more interactive.
As far as the actual course material is concerned, Rosetta Stone is a software-only course that uses image-audio and image-text associations without any reference to the corresponding English term. Although, this is an interesting and somewhat effective method to teach a language, some of our testers had trouble adapting to this method because there was no reference material once they got lost. |
